Fortress to Burn
by Rebecca Parker
Summary: Lindsey receives word of Darla's death.


TITLE: Fortress to Burn  
  
AUTHOR: Rebecca Parker  
  
EMAIL: NumfarGal@aol.com  
  
RATING:  
  
PAIRING: Lindsey/Darla  
  
SUMMARY: Lindsey is sent news of Darla  
  
SPOILERS: Up to "Lullaby"  
  
FEEDBACK: Yes please!  
  
DISCLAIMER: Joss and Mutant Enemy own all  
  
DISTRIBUTION: All the usual suspects. Anyone else, please ask first.  
  
NOTE: Title comes from a lyric in Madonna's song "Power of Goodbye"  
  
DEDICATION: To Nicola- thanks for the beautiful layout.  
  
  
  
  
  
The letter came without a return address, and the words were typed, not written, yet Lindsey had no doubt that Lilah Morgan was the sender.  
  
He opened his mailbox each day dreading to find the very thing he held in his hands at this moment. They had found him somehow, and Lindsey had cursed under his breath as he slammed the door to his mailbox shut.  
  
He had waited until he walked inside the house he was renting to rip the letter open and see what threats or taunts she had sent him. He had expected page upon page of whatever dribble Lilah felt compelled to write him; he couldn't forget how full of herself Lilah was, and how she would often drone on and on about the very subject.  
  
But Lilah had chosen brevity this time, and Lindsey stared at the three sentences neatly typed before him:  
  
"Thought you might wanna know Darla's dust.  
  
Oh, and, by the way, she had Angel's kid.  
  
Toodles."  
  
At first, Lindsey had laughed, sure that this was just some joke that Lilah cooked up while her nails were drying.  
  
But as he sank into the hard cushions of the secondhand couch he had bought for himself, he started to believe it. Despite knowing half of what was written was impossible, Lindsey believed it. That's what the did- Wolfram & Hart made the impossible possible.  
  
++++  
  
"What's it like to live forever?  
  
The question had been asked after Lindsey had consumed an entire bottle of wine, Darla passing up a glass like she passed up his advances.  
  
They had sat draped across the couch, her body lying on top of his as he gently ran his fingers across the scars that Angel had left behind. He didn't even realize what he was doing at the time, how while asking her about her immortality, he caressed what it couldn't protect her from- pain. Scars.  
  
Lindsey had scars- one on his face, two on his legs, and innumerable ones on the inside. He watched her as she stared across the room, and he wondered if she even heard the question.  
  
He started to ask her again when she turned her gaze back to his, a smile dancing on her face and that familiar look in her eyes; there was so much going on inside them, yet Lindsey knew he could never touch it. He was starting to get tired of even trying.  
  
"Powerful," she said, and the smile widened. It was the answer he had expected from her, and he nodded. "But besides that?"  
  
"Besides powerful?" Darla asked, and she suddenly looked disinterested. "Does it even matter?"  
  
Lindsey looked away, mulling the question over in his head. He thought it should somehow, but, for a creature like her, he didn't suppose it did.  
  
He understood, and sadly accepted, that it was the reason Darla was even with him at all.  
  
She controlled him, and they both knew it. She would play him like a harp, and he would sing all the right notes.  
  
She would tease him- rubbing herself against him, occasionally letting things get hot enough that he thought they would go far enough. One night, she had even let him taste her, but quickly shut down before the tables could be turned.  
  
And she knew it was enough for him, and he hated it. As a lawyer, he was trained to keep his cards to himself, but she saw his whole hand.  
  
She knew everything, and he knew nothing.  
  
"Power is everything," she had said, and Lindsey awoke from the daze he had fallen into.  
  
"You of all people should know that," she finished, moving out of his reach and sitting up on the edge of the couch. She leaned over and picked up his glass. She brought it to her nose, shaking the glass lightly with her hand and letting the scent of the alcohol drift in.  
  
For a moment, Lindsey thought she was going to give in and take a sip, and he was breathless with anticipation. He watched her lips move closer and closer to the glass until, finally, it was between them, and Lindsey sat up to watch her.  
  
She turned to look at him, and she pulled away, smiling at his reaction. She laughed. "So sad, Lindsey. You gave it all away." She put the glass down in front of her and pushed it far across the table. She turned her body back to him, and moved her hand to his leg.  
  
"You want to know what it's like to be immortal?"  
  
"I did ask," Lindsey responded, although the tone of his voice came out more pleading and less annoyed than he had intended.  
  
"You want to know," she said again, but this time it was not a question but a statement. Her hand moved higher, and his heart raced faster. "You want me to show you."  
  
He nodded in agreement.  
  
Darla smiled, and she moved her way down his body, and as Lindsey watched Darla's beautiful features contort into her vampiric ones, he knew somehow that this was the moment that she would give in- that he would gain some power back.  
  
"I can show you," she said, her lips circling his navel, her tongue sneaking out as she moved lower.  
  
Lindsey closed his eyes; letting his hands wander down to entangle themselves in her silken blond hair. He held what he hoped to be his last breath as he felt her teeth graze against his skin.  
  
He didn't see Darla as she bit him. He didn't watch as the first drops of his blood flowed into her eager mouth.  
  
He kept his eyes shut, visions of the past playing like a poorly shot movie projected onto the back of his eyelids. The room started to fade away, and he felt as if he were being pulled by a strong current towards - something. And then it all stopped.  
  
He struggled to open his eyes, and he watched her move back up to face him and lick his blood off her lips. "The alcohol makes you taste so sweet," she said, laughing.  
  
"Now I-" he started, his voice weak and shaking as he looked to her for further instruction. His mind ran over the procedure; he would taste her next. Finally.  
  
She kept smiling and it unnerved him. She reached down to the two ripped and ragged holes she had left in his torso and dragged her nails across it, causing a cry of pain from Lindsey as the feeling returned to his body. Next came a low moan as he understood what it all meant.  
  
"You wanted me to taste the wine, and I did. You wanted me to taste you, and I did." She shook her head, mocking him with each turn, each strand of hair and each inch of skin bouncing with her laughter. "Not the way you wanted it, is it?"  
  
"Bitch," he muttered, and he wanted to take the word back as soon as he had said it. The wine, the loss of blood, the heat between his legs- his mind was facing too many obstacles to be able to think clearly.  
  
"Quite," she responded, still grinning, proud of herself. "Yet, after all that- after I fucked with you," she said, quickly running her hands over the bulge in his pants, causing him to come almost instantaneously, "you still want me." She smiled. "You can't help it."  
  
Lindsey closed his eyes again, ashamed of himself and his actions, but most ashamed because he knew every word she said was true; ashamed that this was the most intimate they had ever been, and he loved it. He wanted more.  
  
"That's what it's like to live forever," she said. "Knowing you can fuck over anything, and there's nothing anyone can do about it."  
  
She leaned back against him, taking a deep breath and tucking herself into his arms.  
  
And he let her back in, as she was before. And he held her.  
  
++++++  
  
Lindsey laid back against the couch, a cold beer in one hand and the letter from Lilah still clutched in the other.  
  
He had been sitting in the same spot for the last hour, occasionally sipping the beer and waiting for the numbness that usually followed.  
  
His eyes roamed over the three short sentences as if somehow the letters would rearrange themselves into something more pleasant.  
  
The sky darkened, and so did the living room. He didn't even reach over to turn on the lamp and instead sat in the dark, eventually fumbling over to the kitchen for another beer.  
  
The alcohol wasn't having an effect on him, and he cursed angrily as he finally got up and turned the lights on. The brightness of the room stung his eyes, and he quickly shielded them until they had the time to adjust.  
  
He didn't understand what he was feeling. So many different conflicting emotions were filling his head, and instead of a buzz from the alcohol, he felt the approach of one hell of a headache.  
  
Darla was dead. He sighed, pinching the bridge of his nose as he leaned forward. The idea seemed so foreign to him, as if those three words should never exist alone together.  
  
He ignored the fact that she had already died once and concentrated on his long held belief that she would never let anyone take her down. Yet someone did, and Lindsey couldn't fathom it.  
  
What was worse was trying to make sense of the second sentence. He picked the paper back up and looked it over. Vampires couldn't have children. He didn't know all of the rules, but he knew that one. He had never even heard about the possibility in the halls of Wolfram & Hart, where damn near everything imaginable was discussed.  
  
He thought about calling Lilah and charming more details out of her, but even his wounded ego wouldn't allow him to speak to that bitch again. It was just what she wanted, he knew. She was probably waiting by the phone for his frantic call demanding an explanation. She probably had state troopers out watching for his car to cross the California state line in a race to get back to stake Angel and kill the son of a bitch who took Darla out- if, that is, they weren't one and the same.  
  
He looked down and watched his hands shake, and he muttered as he balled them into fists. He was angry, that was sure. Sad? Of course. No matter what Darla had put him through and how she had played him, he still cared for her. He hated himself for it, but he did.  
  
But as he clenched his eyes shut, trying to focus on the thoughts inside his head, he recognized something else boiling inside of him: Relief.  
  
Lindsey stood up and began to pace the room again, his eyes focused on the letter which sat on the table in front of the couch.  
  
Darla was dead.  
  
He wasn't going to concentrate on the baby. He didn't know how to make sense of it, and he would never know unless he made some choices he didn't want to.  
  
But Darla dead- he could concentrate on that. He could concentrate on how, suddenly, he felt stronger. He could concentrate on how he was finally starting to feel like the Lindsey McDonald that had existed before they had brought her back from Hell in that box.  
  
It was as if whatever power she had over him had faded with her, and the headache started to disappear. Things suddenly became clearer.  
  
He stood still, taking a deep breath and trying to decide whether or not he was an asshole for smiling. But he closed his eyes and remembered all the times she had grinned at him, laughed at him, chuckled at him as she played him so expertly. She had him tamed like a little puppy dog, and now, with her gone, he felt the urge to bite.  
  
He walked back over to the table and picked up the letter, quickly ripping it into pieces and dropping it to the floor. He smirked as he realized the letter had evoked probably the exact opposite of the response that Lilah had intended, and that was just icing on the cake- a nice bonus.  
  
As he took another sip of his beer, finally enjoying the taste and feeling the effects, he thought maybe he would give her a call after all.  
  
  
  
THE END 


End file.
